


The Angel Who Can Mend

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [101]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Contemplative, F/M, Gen, John's songs, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Plays the Violin, Sherlock's Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is upstairs having a private conversation - that is, phone sex - with Mary. Sherlock plays his violin and contemplates John's insistence on describing Sherlock as a kind of angel in his songs; on which of them really is the angel; the concept of kintsukuroi and the nature of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Angel Who Can Mend

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to Save My Soul, and the title comes from the Alex Lloyd song of that name.
> 
> The story also references previous Guitar Man stories Silence and Lullaby and To Be Consoled, as well as the songs Illuminated and Copper Beaches.

After reluctantly ending the conversation with Rupe and Violet – some mild crisis with the howler monkey accountant was apparently brewing outside – Sherlock sent a few necessary text messages then considered how to use his time. John, up in his room in private conference with Mary, was quiet for the time being, but Sherlock was well aware of how those private conferences often went.

As a matter of both aural self-defence and indulgent wing-manning, then, Sherlock opened his violin case and took out the instrument. He tucked the violin under his chin and slid the rosined bow over the strings and began to play. Sonatas and airs, to begin with. Within a few pieces, however, he had fallen into a reverie over the evening’s events, and his playing automatically drifted to the songs he and John both knew.

Sherlock’s eyes were closed as the opening notes of one of his favourites rose from the instrument.

_If I’m conducting light_   
_What is it makes my darkness bright?_   
_Because I am I am I am illuminated_

Sherlock heard John’s voice in his head as he played. Sherlock hoped the phone sex would help settle John from the residue of reaction to Miliotis’s hallucinogen, which had wreaked so much havoc. John’s hand had still betrayed a faint tremor over breakfast, and he had been subconsciously rubbing at his leg all morning, although his limp appeared more a result of very real muscle fatigue than phantom pain. A good dose of serotonin and a post-orgasmic calm could be just what the doctor ordered, as it were.

As Sherlock played, his arms could still feel the sense-memory of John, whom he had held most of the night. His chin and cheek against the wood of the Strad still tickled with the remembered sensation of John’s hair on his skin while Sherlock murmured soft reassurances to his friend as John periodically succumbed to night terrors. Sherlock had stayed awake to calm the chemically reignited nightmares that were themselves borne of hard experience. It had not been their usual routine for a nightmare night, but then, it had not been a usual trigger. And John had welcomed the comfort, so that was all right, then.

Sherlock’s bow swept through the melody of the song John had written about him, about them.

_You’ll deny your human heart, but it’s beating all the same_

Well, Sherlock didn’t deny his human heart so much any more, though they generally didn’t talk about it much. There was no need. They knew who they were.

The next stanza was the one that had always given Sherlock pause.

_And don’t tell me you that you don’t know_   
_Whose side you’re on_   
_Because angels have swords as well as wings_   
_And I know angels are such terrifying things_

As John had once pointed out, the lyrics couldn’t be _wrong_ : they simply reflected John’s experience, and as such were influenced much more by sentiment than by facts. Yet Sherlock had once turned those words back towards John, after the events following the terrible car bombs over a decade ago – the day John had taken command in the aftermath. The day John had sat with the dying woman, and sung to her.

John called Sherlock a terrifying angel in that song, but if Sherlock was going to be sentimental – which he hated being, but if he was – he always thought the epithet suited John better. A creature of fierceness and goodness, and not anodyne at all. John wielded sword and wings in balance. He was healer and soldier both. John Watson was, in his way, a kind of miracle. If any mythological symbol could capture John’s complexity, perhaps the figure of an angel did so.

Yet John was utterly earthly as well – very much a _human_ man.

 _An earthly angel,_ Sherlock thought, then snorted in self-disparagement as he played. _Really._ It was ludicrous, except that it wasn’t, and there was no way that Sherlock could unpack the concept without resorting to hyperbole and overweening sentiment, and, just, _no_.

But still. Sherlock was glad he’d been able to do something for John last night, who time and again, without words or fuss, provided similar anchor points, similar reassurance, for him. He had done so from the night Sherlock had returned from the Year in Hell – and even long before than night, to be honest.

_Because you are, you are, you are illumination_

_And so are you, John Watson_ , thought Sherlock. John had shone a light into him from the first. John had been… illuminating. Illumination. Someone who took the empty places in Sherlock and filled them up, and it had surprised and gratified Sherlock to see from the beginning how he had done the same for John.

Sherlock came to the end of the song and let the thrum of the strings fade out before choosing another melody – _Copper Beaches_ , from John’s old _Gladstone’s Collar_ days. It seemed fitting.

Sherlock heard the creak of John’s feet on the stairs and listened without looking until John reached the sitting room. Sherlock opened his eyes briefly to take in how John was looking.

Tired, with dark bags under his eyes, but nevertheless content. John moved gingerly, his muscles still aching from yesterday’s fits and struggles, but there was no mental stress behind it. John seemed at ease. The phone sex had obviously done him good.

John smiled at him then wandered on through to the bathroom to wash his hands and face, then back to the kitchen to fill the kettle.

Sherlock played his violin and watched John preparing the tea: the motion of John’s sure hands, the tremor now absent; the set of his shoulders and the economical way he filled the space he occupied. It was so easy for those who didn’t know John to misunderstand that minimalism. Idiots, of course. Even his army friends, who had known John very well and in the rawest of circumstances, hadn’t fully understood the beauty of the man.

Sherlock had never had much time for traditional standards of beauty, male or female. Physical beauty was superficial and could also be artificially enhanced. _Minds_ were what attracted Sherlock, when he thought of these things at all. _Character._ Not a genetically fortuitous arrangement of facial features.  
  
It struck Sherlock now, though, that he really did see John as _beautiful_. Not in any traditional sense, for John – while Sherlock supposed him attractive enough, and Mary certainly thought so – was no more than averagely good looking.

Nevertheless, there was something about his friend that personified  _kintsukuroi_ – the Japanese notion of _the beauty of mended things_. That John was both fragile and resilient; that he had been so harmed by life and yet remained so strong and vibrant – how could that not be beautiful? Perhaps that was what Mary meant when she called John 'Beautiful' in those murmured endearments Sherlock sometimes overheard.

John's capacity to endure was always a source of encouragement for Sherlock. It had been his faith that John would endure, that he would persist and unravel the clues that Sherlock had left for him, that had enabled Sherlock to leave in the manner he did, all those years ago, leaping from St Bart's so that he could ensure Moriarty’s empire did not remain a threat to all he held dear. It had been his faith in John’s endurance that had enabled Sherlock, too, to endure 12 months of appalling drudgery, despair, pain and terror. So much of it, too.

After yesterday and his reaction to the hallucinogen, John’s ability to endure what might be seen as unendurable had never been clearer. The fact that John saw nothing remarkable in this capacity of his was part of his _kintsukuroi_ beauty. For John did not merely endure. John built and rebuilt his life out of what he had to hand, and at the same time he had built a life for those close to him.  John survived, and mended, and he healed the wounded and the broken around him simply by being who he was, and then by defending them all with mind, heart and muscle.

_And we’re too small to matter to oceans and skies_   
_And our hearts are too broken to love after lies_   
_But we do_

Sherlock had once thought he was incapable of love. He had never really felt sexual attraction towards anyone, though he’d experimented a little when he was younger. Sex mostly bored him. Furthermore, he had not ever felt romantic love. His relationship with his family had been strained, to say the least, and he’d been friendless for most of his early life, too singular and aware of his singularity to easily connect with others while growing up.

Sherlock hated to think of the wasteland years when he'd found respite from the world and his own hyperactive brain in the drugs. There we're huge patches of time Sherlock couldn't remember. That was more terrifying than the memories that remained. That wasteland full of loneliness.

When the swathes of nothing outnumbered the patches of unhappy memory had led to an overdose, Sherlock had been forced to decide. Live or die? Endure or end? Greg Lestrade had helped him to decide, and like that, he had chosen life and endurance. There’d been time in rehab of course, but most of the work had already been done. Sherlock had chosen to survive, to pursue the Work, even lonely and friendless as he thought he was.

John was the one who had taught him the narrowness of his own thinking, in that regard. Mike Stamford had brought that troubled, fascinating man into the lab and Dr John Watson had proceeded to teach Sherlock Holmes that there were other kinds of love, just as deep and profound, just as life changing and important, as the romantic and sexual love that were so lauded by the general public.

Sixteen years after that day, Sherlock Holmes knew that he loved John ferociously with all those other kinds of love, and through that, he now had a whole family of people whom he loved just as fiercely.  But John – John remained his closest friend. His… soul mate, if you could have one of those you neither loved romantically nor sexually desired. Which you patently could, because _here they were._

Sherlock put down the bow and violin so he could take the cup of tea John offered him. John walked past him then, to stand by the window and look down on Baker Street.

John had done this before, after that bomb in the street; after the worst nightmare nights – he stood at open windows, sometimes with a tremor in his hand, sometimes half-flinching at loud noises, but he would stand there until the tremors and the flinching ceased.

 _John does this. He deliberately faces the things that make him afraid._ _After all this time, he still teaches me the art of living._

John treated it as a kind of therapy. It was a technique that Sherlock borrowed when he was back from the Year in Hell and recovering. He’d stand in front of that window and make himself assess everything in the world outside that made him flinch until his rational mind accepted that there was no threat. Sherlock wasn’t sure it was a sensible approach to tackling their PTSD, but it’s what they did.

Sherlock stood beside John at the window and sipped his tea. “You don’t need to do this today,” he said gently.

John glanced sideways at Sherlock with a small smile. “Sometimes I just need to… steep myself in it. Remind myself it’s only London.”

“London can be bad enough.”

“But it’s the right size for our ambition,” John replied, echoing Sherlock’s words of last night.

“It is indeed. And we… thrive upon the success of realising that ambition.”

John sipped his tea. Then he said, “Bugger nightmares. Let’s see if Greg, Molly and Tad are up for a jam session tonight, eh?

On cue, Sherlock’s phone beeped. John picked it up and grinned at the text message.

_All on for tonight, our place, 7.  
Bring crisps. GL_

John laughed, then. “How do you do that? Know what I need?”

The words ‘it’s a magic trick’ were on the tip of Sherlock’s tongue, but he was washed through with sorrow before they did more than form in his brain. Instead, he put on a superior face and said, “I know everything, John.”

“You don’t know the name of the nearest star,” teased John. He bumped his shoulder against Sherlock’s, as though he knew the other emotion that had momentarily stopped his heart.

“The Sun,” replied Sherlock haughtily.

John laughed. “You’ve been listening to your boy.”

“Ford does rather insist on spot quizzes,” confessed Sherlock.

They paused then, to drink tea, to look at Baker Street, to steep themselves in London.

Downstairs, they could hear Mrs Hudson singing along to the radio. Some pop song with the lyrics:

_Strutting like a queer princess, blowing kisses to the boys;  
Dressed to kill in nine inch heels, black bustier and poise._

John giggled, shoulders shaking with mirth, at the mental image of their Mrs Hudson dancing along, until he had to press his face against Sherlock’s arm to smother the fit. Sherlock was no help at all, pretending not to know what was so damned funny until the refrain:

_I’m the man and I’m the femme_   
_I’m the belle of the fucking ball;_   
_I’m the queen and I’m the king,_   
_I’m the loveliest of aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!_

Then Sherlock folded up too, singing the repeat of the chorus in a ridiculous falsetto between fits of giggling, John joining in, until they were both half crying with laughter.

And for the rest of the day, including the jam session at Greg’s house, Sherlock kept calling John Princess while John called Sherlock the Belle of the Fucking Ball and all anyone else did was to agree with the pair of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a little bit of information about [the concept of Kintsukuroi.](http://www.camiimac.com/good-juju-today-blog/kintsukuroi-more-beautiful-for-having-been-broken)
> 
> Also, this is the 101st Guitar Man story but my 200th story on AO3!! Champagne and streamers!! Woooooooo!


End file.
